5 ways to spectacularly screw up your gym gains

5 ways to spectacularly screw up your gym gains

It’s fantastic that you have started training and your starting to eat right, soon you’ll look like a Greek God or Goddess. Well, unfortunately there is a little bit of fine tuning involved to really aim for your ultimate goal. Here are 5 ways to spectacularly screw up your gym gains:

Go on a very low calorie diet.

So doing all this exercise will mean you burn a lot of calories right, so why not eat a lot less too then you are going to get twice the amount of fat loss? Sorry but you couldn’t be further from the truth…You body is clever, a little too clever as it doesn’t want to lose body fat in order to survive. Various hormones in your body (cortisol release, insulin release) have developed over many years to try and survive natural disasters such as famine so your body really want to hold on to it’s body fat store. So shocking the body into low calorie diet is one of the worst things you can do, it will lead to “metabolic adaption” meaning the slow down of the metabolism so your body can function on fewer calories. If you really go to town and go on a super low calorie intake you could be doing even more damage by going into a catabolic state which means your body will be using lean muscle tissue as it’s energy reserves as well as body fat.Through optimum calorie, nutrient intake and training correctly you can “trick” your body into releasing body fat as an energy source. (balanced hormone response)

Go on a very high calorie diet.

Training hard and lifting heavy, your going to grow some muscle tissue, why not go on a huge increase in calories? This is just as counter productive, it is well known that to ensure you are in a calorie surplus in order to grow muscle, this also means it’s likely you will put in a little bit of body fat too. However the idea of going into an anabolic state (muscle building environment) is to increase calories to +10-15% of maintenance levels and from healthy sources. This is not an excuse to go and eat pizza and fish and chips every night, followed by a bar of Dairymilk and a bag of Haribo. Firsty, there is not enough certain nutrients in these foods (protein,fibre, vitamins, minerals) and secondly you are on your way to getting diabetes and heart problems with the huge influx in sugar and fat consumption.

Don’t consume enough protein.

“Protein, protein, PROTEIN” kind of gives connotations of those gym junkies who actually aren’t able to have conversations about anything else. However in one small respect they do have a point. Protein plays a very important role in the repair and regeneration of muscle tissue before, during and after workouts. This is why we advise you to get a source of protein into every single meal of the day so your body is being drip fed amino acid all the time. Individuals regularly participating in exercise (particularly weights which we want everyone to do) its widely accepted that consuming somewhere between 1.5-2g of protein per kilogram of weight will ensure your body has ample amounts to repair and build lean tissue along with all the other body functions that it is required for.

Go out on a big drinking spree.

Heck its Saturday, you’ve done a load of deadlifts feeling strong, lets go out tonight! People ask whats the healthiest drink to have? Truth is, there is no such thing, alcohol is a poison substance, simple as that. Alcohol requires 7 calories to metabolize per g and has no nutrients what so ever. When you drink, your body prioritizes processing the alcohol ahead of any other nutrient (protein/fats/carbs), so until all the alcohol you drink has been metabolized all other food stays in your system, a lot of which will with various chemical reactions be stored as energy in the form of fat cells. Amongst many other negative side effects, alcohol has a negative effect on hormones which help to build strong efficient muscle (testosterone, human growth hormone) so even if the food you were consuming was being metabolized straight away, your optimum ability to recover and repair would be impaired. Of course we are not trying to scare you or put you off, just making you aware of the consequences, its more of a guide so you maybe save getting bladdered for very special occasions instead of every Friday and Saturday night.

Rely on supplements.

Supplement companies have a lot of power in the fitness industry and beyond. They can have you believe you can get Phil Heath’s physique (Mr Olympia) in a few months by taking their mass gainers. This is so far from the truth its unbelievable. Another supplement which is alway over played is fat burning pills, these would boost you metabolism by maybe 1-2% and the negative side effects can be pretty bad. There are a whole host of other supplement which are sold out there claiming they “may” help with this and “can” help with that, however they can not be passed by the FDA to definitively work. Thats not to say they don’t work however they haven’t had enough studies done on them to say they do. My tip to you all is sort out your basic nutrition before you go anywhere near supplements as none of them will undo bad nutrition.

Well there you have it, 5 ways that you can be giving it everything in the gym and getting nothing back.